Yup, 1989 is the only contender in my life time. We had beaten you pretty comfortably on your turf a couple of years previously and hadn't noted any reasons why we shouldn't turn you over this time. Botham was indeed well past it, and I'm not sure he even played in the first couple of tests. But as well as Gooch and Gower, we also had Lamb and Broad. Maybe Gatting too? We knew our bowling wasn't outstanding, but we thought that it should be good enough. Granted we'd never heard of Mark Taylor, and we presumed that Steve Waugh would still be in 1986/7 mode.

OK, we'd gone down 4-0 to WI 12 months previously, but we tended to see that as par for the course, and obviously Aus did much the same against those guys. We'd competed well against a good Pakistan side home and away, and comfortably drawn the one-off match in Aus in 1988. We honestly thought we had nothing to fear from that Aus side. With hindsight it was just what we did in the late 1980's, but I don't remember it being expected at all.

Whether it was worse than this debacle is hard to say. Both have been appalling in the extreme. It isn't disrespectful to Aus in the slightest to say as much, either.

The other contender slightly before my time would be the 'chucking' series in the late 1950's, where our massively experienced team went down 4-0. From here, it looks like they didn't fancy it any more than the current bunch fancied Johnson's fare.

The other thing about 1989 was the sheer volume of players who turned out for us - iirc it was 29 in six tests. Half of whom made themselves half way through the series by signing up for Gatting's 'rebel' tour to SA.

If the three debutants make their bows at Sydney how many will that bring us to?

11 who played at Bris, Stokes, Panesar, Bresnan & Bairstow have featured from memory so far, so 18? That's an awful lot for a tour.

I think this is up/down there in the worst Ashes series I can recall. The uniformity of direness has made it so. Even in 06/07 we had a couple of double tons at Adelaide.

Sounds slightly mad, but there were a few highlights in that series. Collingwood at the Gabba, KP and Collingwood at Adelaide, Cook at Perth. I'm sure we took like 7 wickets in a session at Perth too (IIRC), but in the end we were just overwhelmed by a greater team.

This series (apart from Stokes at Perth) has been horrible from bottom to top.

I have to confess, nearly seven weeks or so since Brisbane and I'm still shocked at what England has produced this series. I didn't think they were all that, but did think them a solid, professional, experienced outfit.

I thought we may win this series on our turf, because of depth in bowling and because we just needed one or two blokes to catch fire with the cue to support Clarke - something more likely to happen at home in a slightly inexperienced side than away.

While England hasn't bowled as well as the home series, tttt the attack hasn't been terrible - they've taken enough early poles to have Australia in strife enough times to win the series. It seems, though, that England as a unit has completely lost the ability to go up a gear with the bat.

There have been a number of times they've been in a decent position, but a combo of good bowling and this strange becalmedness and lack of intent means they don't advance the game. So they'll be 60-70 odd overs into their innings and might be three or four down, but it's 3/140 or 150 odd. Lose a couple of poles and it's all out 200 stuff.

It's a bit like when I started playing golf and wouldn't hit my driver because I couldn't control it. Bloke I was playing with said "if yer gonna be in the ****, you may as well be in the **** 60 yards further along the hole."

Seven majors later and I still thank him

I know we all have a giggle here about #intent, but lack of it has seriously hurt England this series. It's been coming for a while with how they've batted over the past couple of years, but it's really bent them over this tour.

There are parallels with the current series - England the holders and probable favourites, an unheralded Aussie team on the back of a really poor period, and a complete an utter thrashing handed out to the Poms.

But somehow this isn't quite as horrific as that. Partly because it happens at night and we don't have to watch. Partly because England is a more professional outfit now and there doesn't seem a realistic prospect of a repeat of the misery years of the 90s. And maybe partly because I have a bit more of a sense of perspective these days. I'm nearly as old as Burgey after all.

Yes, you're right, when you stay up to follow it there's a terrible physical and emotional investment involved. It's enormously better to be hallucinating with tiredness when elated (2010/11) than when depressed (1990/91; 1994/95; 1998/99; 2002/03; 2006/07).